


good days

by thereisnoreality



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, M/M, Time Travel, Younger Lee Donghyuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:41:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29193225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereisnoreality/pseuds/thereisnoreality
Summary: Mark wakes up in his twenty year old body which is odd considering he’s currently twenty four. Orwastwenty four. Is twenty four? It doesn’t really matter; the point is Mark went to bed in 2022 and wakes up in 2018, with Jaehyun snoring loudly on the opposite side of the room in their old dorm.Mark does not know what to do now.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 32
Kudos: 653





	good days

**Author's Note:**

> listen. its been 2 months of absolute burnout. i dont know either.

_“God.” Mark drops his head back and says to the ceiling with much feeling, “I forgot how much of a little devil you could be.”_

_Donghyuck laughs and wipes the back of his mouth, sitting back on his heels. “That’s on you, hyung” he says, voice lilting full of promise and mischief and it’s all Mark can do to stop himself from dragging Donghyuck into a kiss. Lick up those slick pink lips, and clench his hands around that slim waist, drag them down those long legs that never fail to send a faint thrill through him. “I’ve never been anything else.”_

...

Mark wakes up in his twenty year old body which is odd considering he’s currently twenty four. Or _was_ twenty four. Is twenty four? It doesn’t really matter; the point is Mark went to bed in 2022 and wakes up in 2018, with Jaehyun snoring loudly on the opposite side of the room in their old dorm.

Mark does not know what to do now.

He considers the idea that this might be a dream. That somehow his brain has catapulted him back four years and dug around until it produced a fully vivid dream flush with every detail of their old messy dorm, the noises that came with living 8 other boys, and the scream Taeil produced when Johnny accidentally dropped something on his foot.

Mark looks out into the chaos that greets him in the living room and then slowly shuts the bathroom door again, staring at his reflection. He’s got black hair — but that really doesn’t mean much with how many times he’s changed his hair colour — and he’s _so_ much skinnier than before. Mark pokes doubtfully at his right bicep and then pinches his arm hard. The skin turns pale yellow before it slowly bleeds back into red and Mark watches it until the spot starts throbbing in protest.

He doesn’t wake up. So. Definitely not a dream.

It might be a hallucination, Mark considers as Yuta yells at him from the other side of the door to _hurry the fuck up before I piss in your bed, Mark Lee_. The stress of five promotions and two world tours in the span of a year might have finally caused Mark to snap and his physical body is probably in a padded room now while his brain swanned it’s way around his past, when things were better. When Mark had a more solid grip on his life. If he ever had such a thing — it was mostly just desperately pinching onto the edge with two fingers, desperately hoping for it to stay that way.

He splashes some water on his face and brushes his teeth — hopes to god he picked the right toothbrush — before unlocking the door and letting a glowering Yuta in.

“Don’t lock the goddamn door,” he grouses, eyes bleary with sleep and hair hanging in his face. It’s not as long as it was — will be? — and Mark startles at the sudden change. “You know the rules.” Before Mark can even consider telling him that _no_ , he really doesn’t, it’s all been lost to time, that cruel mistress and he hasn’t had to live with all eight of them in _years_ , Yuta shuts the door in his face.

Mark doesn’t take any offense to it. Yuta’s disposition in the morning still hadn’t improved. Won’t improve? All the way in 2022?

Mark’s head hurts.

He casts a glance around the dorm but there’s no screaming rush, no Taeyong pushing all of them towards the door, no managers yelling about the _fucking time_ , so Mark assumes they don’t have a schedule. At least not for an hour or so. They never claimed to be a group that was always on time, after all.

He wanders back to his room, almost forgetting where it is before opening the door cautiously and then ducking inside once he sees Jaehyun awake, and fumbling through his phone.

“Hey, hyung,” Mark says and barely manages to conceal a grimace at his voice. What the _fuck_. He does not remember sounding like a harmonica had been shoved down his throat four years ago, why is his voice so _high_? “I kind of forgot, what are we doing today?”

Jaehyun peers up at him through messy bangs. “I’m not doing anything,” he says with a tone that implies Mark should have probably screwed his head on the right way before getting out of bed this morning. “I think _you_ have Dream stuff though.”

“Oh.” Mark says and then remembers. Donghyuck. Donghyuck is also here, in 2018. Has he also time travelled? “Oh, right. Cool. Thanks hyung.” And then he’s hurrying back out before Jaehyun can even respond.

He hesitates outside the door Donghyuck shares with… Doyoung? Mark can’t remember too clearly. He raises his hand to knock just as it opens and Doyoung nearly slams into him.

“Uh,” Mark starts but Doyoung just stares at him balefully before brushing past him to the kitchen.

“Please don’t start a fight,” he tells Mark flatly over his shoulder. “No one has the energy to put up with you two right now.”

Again, Mark doesn’t even get a chance to respond before Doyoung walks away from him. He wonders if being grumpy in the mornings was a thing that had faded with time for his hyungs. He certainly does not remember Doyoung being this annoyed in his time.

Slowly, Mark pulls out his phone that he’d shoved in the pocket of his pajama pants before getting up that morning and looks at the date. The cracked screen informs him that it is mid-September in the year 2018 — _still,_ because having a tiny freakout in the bathroom for a couple of minutes hadn’t been enough to send him back — and Mark sends a grateful prayer up to whoever was listening before he presses his finger over the fingerprint pad and unlocks his phone. He _definitely_ would not have remembered whatever password he’d picked four years ago.

He completely forgets about his original mission and just stands there, scrolling through his phone. Outside Donghyuck’s half open door, Mark runs through the internet, lurks on Twitter and pulls up Instagram before realising that none of them have their own accounts just yet. They’re in the middle of We Go Up promotions, he realises with a sudden shock. Four years ago, he was promoting with Dream, under the, very valid, impression that he was going to be leaving soon. And now he’s back here again. For some godforsaken reason.

Doyoung’s words make a lot more sense now, Mark realises, pulling up his chat with Donghyuck. It doesn’t reveal much — they always preferred talking face to face or on the phone when circumstances didn’t allow for the former — but their relationship, Mark remembers, hadn’t really started yet. It was at its nascent point, when no one else knew and they were still smarting from the scabbed wounds of last year — five years ago? Mark’s head _hurts_ — and didn’t know what any of it meant, let alone what it meant to have a relationship at this point in their careers. They had just been starting out, just tentatively touching whatever this huge nebulous thing had become after Donghyuck had angrily cried at him and Mark had yelled and they’d ended up kissing, quite awfully, in a storage closet on the third floor of their company’s building.

Mark remembers that closet quite fondly.

“Will you stop standing there like a creep?” Donghyuck’s voice wafts through the open door grouchily and Mark almost drops his phone in his surprise. “It’s _loud_ and the light is hitting me in the face. Just get in here.”

Mark hesitates for a second before he walks into the room, shutting the door behind him. Donghyuck is curled up against the wall, yawning widely. His hair is the colour of still warm caramel, sticking up all over his head in a golden cloud and it feels like getting hit in the face with a bucket of cold water to see him like that again.

“Hyuck?” Mark asks tentatively. “Do you…” What is he supposed to ask? _Did you also time travel back four years? Do you know what’s happening?_

Donghyuck just jerks open his covers in a clear invitation. “Get the fuck in,” he groans. “I’m _cold_ and we only have like ten minutes.”

Mark slides in before he can think better about it and Donghyuck immediately latches onto him, nose wrinkling up as his feet brush up against Mark’s bare calves. “Why the fuck are you so cold?” He grumbles.

Mark can’t help but stare at him. There’s not many physical differences that he can clock onto but this Donghyuck is _so_ young. His cheeks are rounder and there’s hardly any stubble on his face. And his whole body is smaller than Mark remembers it to be, curling under his own, locking onto all the places he fits best just like a puzzle piece finds its home. They always had fit together perfectly.

“Hyuck,” Mark starts again not knowing exactly where he’s going with this. “Do you… Do you remember what we did yesterday?”

Mark winces as soon as the words leave his mouth. _God_ that was a stupid question. Donghyuck stops shuffling around and scrunches open one eye to look at him. “What does that even mean?” He asks. “Of course I remember, dumbass.”

Mark coughs a little, willing his cheeks not to heat up. Donghyuck will notice instantly. Or maybe not. “What — what did we do?”

Donghyuck opens his other eye too and now he’s fully looking at Mark as if he’s an idiot which is fair given the current circumstances. Mark would be weirded out too if he were in Donghyuck’s shoes. “Were you kidnapped by aliens in the last six hours?” Donghyuck asks, frowning at him. “We had practice and then we came home. Just like we always do.”

Just like they always do. Except, in Mark's timeline last night, four years in the future, they hadn't done that. Not exactly anyway. They’d done some of it, but there had also been a nasty fight sprinkled in the middle of it and Mark had gone to sleep in his own room, smarting from the words he and Donghyuck had snapped at each other, a rubber band slapping across bare skin.

But Donghyuck hadn't done that because this Donghyuck hasn't time traveled. He's still nineteen. He’s in his own time and he has _no idea_ what the fuck is going on. It's only _Mark's_ life that is currently screwed up in ways he doesn't even know how to fix yet.

Mark swallows hard and pushes the panic down before it threatens to overwhelm him. He needs to get his head together and figure out what he's staring down today before anything else. Their jobs always come first. Almost always.

"Remind me what we're doing today," Mark says, trying to sound blasé about it. He reaches up to brush Donghyuck's hair out of his eyes, out of habit and his fingers spark as soon he touches Donghyuck's skin. In that moment, realisation washes over Mark that he's lying in bed with Donghyuck but not _his_ boyfriend Donghyuck. This much younger Donghyuck isn't at the same point that Mark is and is completely unaware that Mark is suddenly four years older than he should be.

Donghyuck eyes him and Mark realises his hand had frozen on Donghyuck's temple, paused in the motion of pushing his hair.

"You're acting _so_ weird," Donghyuck tells him. On the other side of the door, they hear their manager calling for them. Donghyuck sits up, pushing the blankets down and frowns down at Mark contemplatively. "Since when are you this touchy?"

Since he and Donghyuck had gone through a rough patch a year or so into their relationship and it ended with a screaming match — as most of their fights did because Mark was Mark and Donghyuck would always be Donghyuck — and Mark had come away from it with the knowledge that sometimes it took more than words for Donghyuck to feel secure. And that some space necessarily wasn't a bad thing on Mark’s part. And it had worked better since then — _they_ had worked better.

Mark pulls his hand back. "Sorry," he mutters, and shoves it under his thigh as he sits up as well.

Donghyuck raises an eyebrow at him, clearly thinking. He opens his mouth and Mark dreads what he's about to say but all Donghyuck does is prod him with his toes and say, "Scoot over."

Mark does so and Donghyuck slides out of his bed, absentmindedly scratching at his thigh as he does so, the fabric of his shorts riding up as he does so. Mark glances at the curve of his legs and then forces himself to look away. This was so _not_ the time.

They've got a festival to perform at today, Mark learns and then a bunch of small variety show segments to film all at once which will take hours. And then they've got to be back at the company to practice for their Regular comeback which is so close Mark can feel the anxiety all over again when their manager mentions it, as if he hasn't lived through all of this before and knows exactly how it goes.

He spends the whole ride to the festival obsessively watching his We Go Up fancams, trying to memorise the choreography because time travel hadn't afforded him the knowledge of twenty year old Mark — because _why_ would Mark's life ever be easier when it could be like this?

Donghyuck notices, because he always does, and he snickers, pressing into Mark's space, voice low enough that it doesn't catch the attention of their manager in the front seat. "You don't have to worry, _Mark Lee_ ," he says, the syllables of Mark's name lightly tripping off his tongue in a singing drawl. "You're still hot. Even if I _am_ beating you in views." The upturn of his mouth is smug and pink and Mark wants to push him out the window while simultaneously kissing that coffee tinged curve. He settles for rolling his eyes and plugging his headphones back in, ignoring Donghyuck until they reach their destination.

It doesn't get easier. Mark ropes Jisung into practicing with him in a back hallway around the corner from their changing room and forgets half the moves he'd tried to push into his brain on the ride over.

"Hyung," Jisung says worried, pausing in his dancing to look Mark up and down in concern. "Did you hit your head or something? Why are you dancing so badly?"

Mark scrunches up his face. "I'm fine," he says. "I'm just... I don't know. It feels like it's been forever since I danced this song." Not a lie, technically but Jisung just looks at him a confused scrunch to his face.

"You might have brain damage then, hyung," he says bluntly, brattily, and bounces back, snickering, before Mark can swat at him.

The stage doesn't go _as_ badly as Mark was imagining it might but it's still bad enough that every single one of his members picks up on the fact that for some reason, Mark has completely forgotten their choreography overnight. To the fans, Mark's sure it doesn't play off as badly; this performance didn't hold the same rigid perfection that music shows demanded and Mark had gotten away with playing to the crowd a lot, stopping the dancing and gesticulating more often than he would, playing it as if it were a concert and not a routine stage.

But all of Dream notices anyway.

Donghyuck especially does not stop watching Mark the entire day. It's more than a little unnerving, used as Mark is, to the unrelenting pressure of Donghyuck always keeping an eye on him. The others all joke with him, teasing Mark about his old age and Chenle even cheekily offers to take over Mark's lines for the day if he needed to lie down but Donghyuck doesn't join in on any of it. He just smiles vaguely whenever the laughter prompts him to but it doesn't reach his eyes and he keeps on watching Mark, something brewing behind his gaze.

Mark does his damned best to pretend not to notice. It's bad enough that he'd climbed into Donghyuck's bed while operating as an imposter, but Donghyuck was like a friendly shark, until he wasn't. When he smelled blood in the water, it was all over and Mark was keen to keep this bleeding wound far away from him.

It occurs to Mark when they break from filming for lunch and he manages to escape to the bathroom to get a moment's peace that if this isn't a _really_ vivid hallucination and he really has time traveled, he has no idea how to get back to his own time. It wasn't as if he'd climbed into a converted DeLorean and let a crazy physicist propel him backwards in time. He'd just woken up and somehow it had been 2018 all over again.

He's pondering this when the door opens and Donghyuck walks in, yawning. He looks so cute, Mark thinks instantly.

Donghyuck's mouth snaps shut and he instantly narrows his eyes at Mark and Mark, despite his nervousness, has to suppress a smile. Donghyuck was as cute as he was unsubtle.

"Hey, Hyuckie," Mark says, walking over to the sink to wash his hands.

Donghyuck grunts in acknowledgement and just looks at him.

Mark smiles down at his hands before he looks up into the mirror and meets Donghyuck's probing gaze. "What's up?"

"Nothing," Donghyuck waits until the pause gets _just_ long enough to be disrespectful before tacking on a mutinous _hyung_ to the end.

Mark snickers. "Okay," he says, choosing to play dumb. He might as well get some fun out of this while it lasts because Donghyuck sure as hell isn't going to figure this out, no matter how smart he thinks he is. Or actually is.

Mark finishes drying his hands and tosses a final smile over his shoulder as he walks out leaving Donghyuck to stew in whatever twisted concoction he'd brewed up in his own mind.

The day passes in slow increments and Mark is absolutely exhausted by the time they reach the company, hours after everyone else in 127 had arrived. They head straight to practice, not wanting to waste anymore time and Mark casts a sidelong glance at Donghyuck's who looks just as exhausted as Mark feels, lagging half a step behind.

Mark slows down a little and reaches for the bag hanging off his shoulder. Donghyuck started to travel much lighter after their first tour, he remembers. Having to lug a bag through all of the cities they hit during their Neo Zone Tour had been a rude awakening for him. Mark smiles to himself, remembering the time they'd all waited for Donghyuck in the hotel in Moscow while he cursed, trying to shove all of his stuff into his carry on so it could meet the weight requirements, tossing things at the other members so they could carry it for him.

Donghyuck startles only when Mark fully pulls the bag off. "What—" he starts but Mark cuts him off.

"It's like a two minute walk, just let me." He studiously ignores Donghyuck's lost expression as he considers Mark and turns around the corner, leading them to the studio.

Rehearsal goes late, _late_ into the night. Objectively, Mark knows that things get easier — that even though in the back of his mind, this will always be a rat race, that success will always seem just out of reach, he will eventually feel at ease in this life. Right now though, in his twenty year old body, sweat dripping down his face and soaking through his shirt, his feet feeling like lead bricks, weighing him down to the floor, it's hard to remember that.

Only one day has passed in this body and already Mark marvels at their younger selves, all of them, for getting to where they were now. Four years in the future? Mark winces and tears his gaze away from the foggy mirror. It's too late and he’s too exhausted to be thinking about the intricacies of time travel.

Taeyong calls an end to practice at half past two and Donghyuck immediately collapses to the floor, legs splaying outward as he groans, bangs stuck to his forehead. Mark retrieves his water bottle and drops down by his shoes, drinking half the bottle in one go. The rest of them little around the room, all in various states of exhaustion. Jungwoo looks practically catatonic, his obvious nervousness at joining their practices having faded completely in favour of fatigue.

Donghyuck is wincing, Mark notices when he closes the cap on his water bottle and rolls it towards him. Donghyuck sits up, flexing his feet and presses a hand to the flat top of his shoe, massaging there.

Mark clocks onto it immediately. "Here," he says, scooting on the floor so he's sitting facing Donghyuck's feet fully. "Relax your feet." Donghyuck looks at him but is clearly too weary to bother asking why, just does as Mark says, his left foot falling into Mark's hands.

They all have their aches and pains, bruises and places that flare up after too long. Mark knows Yuta's neck will act up if he strains it for too long, that Sicheng's ankles need more ice than most others' do and that Taeyong's back has to be treated with the utmost care unless they want him to end up in the hospital again.

Just as he knows everyone's points of hurt, he knows Donghyuck's feet started cramping up years after debut and they do so after nearly every long practice session, knows he didn't tell Mark about it until Mark had found him one day, sitting on the floor of the smallest practice room on the fifth floor, hands pressed into his feet, tears brimming in the corner of his eyes as he tried in vain to stop the pain.

They've been on their feet nearly the whole day and Mark knows by now, Donghyuck's feet must be aching something awful.

He pulls off Donghyuck's sneaker, and presses his thumbs into the meat of Donghyuck's foot, pushing into the arch.

" _Fuck_ ," Donghyuck hisses, leaning up onto his elbows as a shudder travels through his body. "What the fuck, hyung?"

Mark glances up through his lashes and immediately regrets it. Donghyuck's mouth is parted, air rushing through half gritted teeth, his lips pink and chapped after hours outside, in the cool fall wind, and his hair is plastered to his forehead, bangs darkened with sweat, neck glistening in the bright lights of the practice room. Mark has seen this Donghyuck so many times, in so many different ways that it _shouldn't_ take him by surprise, shouldn't make his mouth go dry and his heart stutter, tripping over itself crashing to the unforgiving concrete of Donghyuck’s unwavering gaze.

Besides, this isn’t _his_ Donghyuck.

“Your feet are cramping up,” he says after a too long pause. “They usually do, right?”

“How—” Donghyuck cuts off with a hiss when Mark moves over to his other foot, pulling the sneaker off at the wrong angle. Mark murmurs an apology and pushes his foot back, flat, digging the knuckles of his first two fingers into the ball of Donghyuck’s foot. Donghyuck exhales shakily and then continues, “How do you know that?”

“You told me.”

Donghyuck’s tone sharpens. “No, I didn’t.”

Mark allows himself a smirk, cast down at the dirty practice floor. Not yet anyway. He doesn’t bother answering and to his credit, Donghyuck looks too tired to push him. They sit there in silence, until the quiet gets broken by Sicheng elbowing Yuta in the ribs before he can get too close and then, as one, they all scatter, grabbing their things to head home.

To do it all over again tomorrow.

Mark wonders if he’s going to be here when he wakes up. Maybe this was just a fluke. Maybe the universe would right itself in the morning.

He wakes up staring at the popcorn ceiling with Jaehyun snoring loudly. It is still 2018.

A sigh escapes him, louder than he would like it to be and Jaehyun's snoring stops for a moment, before he groans and turns around before starting up again. His phone tells him it's nearing eight in the morning and Mark sobs a little, pressing his face into his pillow and muffling a whine. He'd barely gotten five hours of sleep. They've got more stuff to do today, more promotions, more practice. In his time, they'd just come off a comeback, and Mark had been looking forward to his meager week of rest before SuperM promotions had started up. And here he is, thrust into the wildfire, hanging from the lowest branch, feet dangling over the flames all over again.

His stomach grumbles loudly in protest. Mark had skipped dinner yesterday in favour of trying to remember what the Regular choreography had been before they'd headed off to meet 127 at the company for practice. He rolls out of bed with a groan, wishing he could ignore his body just for another hour and heads to the kitchen, scratching his stomach as he does so.

There's egg rolls in the fridge along with some rice and soup and Mark pulls it all out, sets it on the table. While the soup's warming up, Mark heads back to the bathroom and brushes his teeth, yawning loudly again, going through the motions slowly.

He eats his breakfast on the table, with the window open, letting the cool air waft in. Gooseflesh prickles up and down his thighs and arms but Mark keeps eating. It's an odd moment of peace, surrounded by all the crazy of his life currently.

A door opens somewhere in the dorm but Mark pays it no mind. He scrolls through his phone, lets the honey of SZA's music pour through the room until he senses another person watching him and looks up to see Donghyuck standing in the doorway to the kitchen, looking at Mark.

Mark lowers his spoon to the bowl and smiles at Donghyuck. "Morning, Hyuckie."

Donghyuck watches him for a moment, silent and Mark looks back at him, fondness welling up in him. He always likes Donghyuck in the morning, with the cloak of sleep blurring his edges away, and his hair soft and puffy to the touch, a caramel cloud all on it's own.

Mark tilts his head at the boxes of food still on the counter. "Want breakfast? We've got to head out soon—"

"You're not Mark." The words fall like a lead balloon in the floor between them and Mark's heart slams in echo.

"What?" Mark manages, glad he managed to put his spoon down before his hands started to sweat spontaneously.

Donghyuck tilts his head at him. "Well," he amends. "You're not _my_ Mark. Are you?"

Mark's mouth falls open. "I—" he stutters. "What? No, Hyuck— what—"

Donghyuck rolls his eyes cutting off his stuttering and walks forward, pulling out the chair opposite Mark and dropping into it carelessly, tucking his knees up against his chest. "God, hyung," he says. "It's a good thing you decided to become an idol and not a spy or something. You're _terrible_ at this whole lying shit. Are you even my hyung?" He continues thoughtfully, leaning over to steal Mark's chopsticks and pick up some kimchi for himself.

Mark stares at Donghyuck in silence, his heart hammering, mind spinning at top speed. Donghyuck raises an eyebrow at him. "Well?"

That snaps Mark out of his daze. "I am," he blurts. "Not like _your_ Mark exactly but I am— I am Mark."

Donghyuck pinkens a little and only later will Mark realise it's because of his words. "So what Mark are you?"

Mark laughs a little. "You wouldn't believe me even if I told you."

"Try me," Donghyuck says, eyeing him.

Mark opens his mouth.

"You're right," Donghyuck hisses six hours later when they're tripping off the music stage, to the cheers of a hundred. "I don't believe you. I think you've gone crazy."

Mark snickers, unable to be anything but amused by this. He's sweating through his shirt and all the layers of makeup caked onto his face and they're surrounded by staff and cameras and _now_ Donghyuck has decided to broach this subject. “What exactly don’t you believe?” He asks, peeling the tape that had stuck his mic to his cheek off.

“You cannot be from the future,” Donghyuck says, low, sticking to Mark’s side as they file down the corridors, bowing to everyone they pass by.

“I don’t know what you want me to tell you, Hyuck.”

“Prove it.”

Mark scoffs. “Yeah right,” he says. “I don’t wanna go back to my time and find out it’s become an apocalypse because I told you some random shit that triggered the butterfly effect.”

“I’m too pretty to understand what that means,” Donghyuck informs him haughtily. “It doesn’t have to be something important! Hyung!” He whines further when Mark gives him no reply. “Do we… Does — does NCT— ” his voice drops a little, whether out of lack of confidence or because the hallway narrows and they’re suddenly filled in with people on all sides — Mark fights the urge to find a mask — as he struggles to continue his question. "Do we—

"Yeah," Mark interrupts putting him out of his misery. "Yeah we do, Hyuck." He has no idea, this Donghyuck, what's waiting for him on the other side. No idea how big they're all going to get, how he's going to blossom, how amazing he's going to be. Though that might just Mark's rose coloured contacts talking.

"What about us?" Donghyuck asks, softer, and Mark stills for a moment. How can he encompass them, all four years, in one sentence? How can he even begin to do that? Mark is a man of words, they fall out of him all the time, twisted into two languages, at high speed, through bursts of laughter, and callused fingers gripping a ballpoint pen stolen from a hotel long gone.

He's got so many pages and pages, half written notes in his phone, scribbles in a notebook Taeyong had gifted him, all of them about Donghyuck, about the curve of his cheeks, the sound of his laugh, especially the ones where he's making fun of Mark, of his nose. Mark feels a flush break over him and he turns away fully, before Donghyuck can catch sight of it. No one, especially Donghyuck, needs to know exactly how much he's written about his nose.

"We're good, Hyuck," he says. "I promise."

Donghyuck stays silent, but he moves up, close enough that Mark can feel his fingers brush his, just for a few seconds, before they're gone. And somehow, Mark knows he understands.

Mark had assumed that Donghyuck would let things go after that. That was a foolish expectation, he knows that now. Donghyuck asks him questions constantly, slipping them in when he thinks Mark will be caught off guard enough to answer without thinking about it.

"Stop asking," he says exasperatedly after the fifth time this occurs. He's been back in 2018 for over a week now and without meaning to, he's settled back into the old routine. Not that his life before — in the future? — hadn't been hectic, but there's a certain sense of urgency woven into the fabric of their lives now, as if they're running towards a finish line that has yet to materialise.

He still thinks about how exactly he’s going to get back to own time, but the worry of that has just been slightly eclipsed by the fact that they’ve got the most important comeback of their lives hanging over their heads like an unfriendly sword and Mark, no matter what time travel nonsense the universe throws at him, is not going to let anyone down.

"I want to know!" Donghyuck insists, hanging over Mark, completely uncaring of the fact that they're both absolutely dripping with sweat.

"No," Mark says, mimicking the whine of Donghyuck's voice and earning himself a narrow-eyed glare for his troubles. "You don't need to know any of it, Donghyuck," he sighs, leaning against the wall, catching Yuta double over laughing at something Johnny is saying, always so energetic even though it's crawling past one in the morning.

"You're _so_ boring," Donghyuck sighs, dropping his head down on Mark's thighs, face down. His hands are somewhere between Mark's splayed legs and his mouth is uncomfortably close to the line of Mark's dick. He forces himself not to react. This was surely crossing so many lines. Donghyuck peers up at him through his lashes and Mark swallows. "Hyung," Donghyuck croons. Instantly Mark's chest starts thumping in dread. A Donghyuck with that look in his eyes was never safe to be around.

"What?" He asks warily. "What do you want now?"

"Do you know how long it's been since we kissed?" Donghyuck asks, propping himself up on one hand. Mark tries not to rear back too violently; it would only draw the attention to them. In his time, everyone knows, of course, but he remembers still trying to keep it a secret at this point. Still thrilled with the novelty of being able to wrap his arms around Donghyuck, tug him into the nearest half secluded space, and kiss him without having to wait.

Mark clears his throat, bringing his attention back to the present — past? — and forces himself not to laugh in incredulity. "I am not kissing you, Donghyuck," he hisses.

"Why not?" Donghyuck demands. "It's been like over a week now, hyung." He pushes out his lips. "I've been deprived."

"Because," Mark snaps, and then glances around, lowering his voice, and ducking his head closer to Donghyuck's. He smells sweaty but underneath it all, wafting from his hair, is the smell that is inherently Donghyuck, peach and mint wafting off him. "Because, I'm not _your_ hyung."

Donghyuck arches an eyebrow at him. "So?"

" _So_?" Mark asks incredulously. "That just feels — wrong."

"Why?" Donghyuck asks and his hand lands on Mark's inner thigh, fingers digging into the plush muscle. Mark's thigh twitches and Donghyuck's smile curls into a smirk.

"Because—" Mark just manages to hiss before Taeyong calls an end to their break and they have to scramble upwards, fighting off the lead in their shoes before getting back into formation. The familiar beats of Regular start up again and Mark has to force himself to focus, ignoring the way his heart skips when he meets Donghyuck's eyes in the mirror.

Donghyuck corners him in the bathroom after practice and Mark is just exhausted enough to not react quickly enough when he locks the door behind him.

"I'm naked," Mark says uselessly. He's got his towel wrapped precariously around his waist and he'd foolishly left putting on his clothes until after he'd finished brushing his teeth.

"I can see that," Donghyuck says, leaning against the bathroom door and obviously running his eyes up an down Mark's body. Mark tries not to squirm — he's not insecure about his body, not anymore, but it feels a little off to be back in his twenty year old body. His very scrawny twenty year old body. "I want you to kiss me."

Mark sighs. He'd known this was coming, Donghyuck doesn't let things go easily, and no deterrent, especially something as trivial as practice, was going to stop him. "I'm like five years older than I should be," he says. "It's kind of creepy, Hyuck."

"That's your point of view," Donghyuck says, nearly purrs. " _I'm_ seeing it as kissing my hot, _older_ boyfriend." He drags his eyes up and down Mark's body again, and adds contemplatively, "Probably experienced too."

Mark lets out a shaky breath even as his gut stirs. "That is so wrong," he sighs. "Coming out of your mouth, it sounds _so_ wrong."

"Mhmm," Donghyuck hums, hearing the defeat for what it is. He steps towards Mark, hands making to curl around Mark's waist and Mark instantly steps back, pointing a warning finger at him.

"Keep it above the shoulders."

Donghyuck rolls his eyes. "Prude," he mumbles, but his eyes are alight when he leans in to kiss Mark. His fingers are warm on Mark's damp shoulders, and Mark exhales a little shakily, glad he'd brushed his teeth, before Donghyuck presses his mouth against his.

It's shallow enough at first; Donghyuck is tentative, despite his brash words — his bark was always worse than his bite — and Mark lets him take his time, until he's pushing in harder a tiny noise escaping him when Mark returns it, gives as good as he gets. He doesn’t mean to touch Donghyuck but it comes instinctively, hands cupping the soft curve of Donghyuck’s cheeks and guiding him closer, until the pink petals of Donghyuck’s mouth unfurls for him, panting softly.

Mark wants to kiss him forever, wants to push him up on the counter and lick his way down Donghyuck’s neck, wants to give him something he’s going to remember, something he’s going to compare whenever he gets to this point with the other Mark and _god_ , Mark cannot believe he’s jealous of his younger self all of a sudden.

He doesn’t get enough data though, to compare it to _his_ Donghyuck because common sense kicks in and Mark pushes him back before it can go too far.

"Hyuck, that's — we shouldn't —" Mark manages, embarrassingly out of breath.

"Boo," Donghyuck sighs, but he pulls back, putting space in between them. His mouth is so pink and glossy and his eyes are shimmering with delight and Mark wants nothing more than to kiss him again but he stays back.

"Satisfied?" Mark asks instead of voicing any of it, instead of pinning Donghyuck to the door and kissing him until the time paradox collapses in on itself or until it’s time for rehearsal, whichever comes first. "Can I put my underwear on now?"

"There was like _no_ experience in that," Donghyuck teases, but he unlocks the door and narrows his eyes at Mark. "We're doing that again."

"Fine," Mark says bluntly because it’s always better to grab onto the inch Donghyuck gives him and run with as far as he can. "Go away now."

Donghyuck shoots him a dazzling him before he leaves.

...

Mark closes his eyes in 2018 and wakes up in 2022.

Jungwoo is screaming at Yuta in the kitchen. He's twenty four years again and he miraculously remembers his phone password.

A kiss. He'd kissed Donghyuck, not _his_ Donghyuck, and somehow that had been the thing to send him back — forward? — back to his own time. His head is hurting again.

Mark gets up, checks the time on his phone, decides he really doesn't care how early it is and grabs the nearest clothes he can find, before hurtling downstairs. He always envies the fifth floor for the quiet, all of them hidden away in their rooms most of the time, but today Mark bangs the door open and shatters that instantly.

He ignores Johnny's startled look from the kitchen and walks straight to Donghyuck's room, slamming the door open and startling Donghyuck. He was already awake it seems, just curled away from the door with his phone in his hand and he frowns over his shoulder at Mark as Mark shuts the door and locks it, just as Donghyuck had done to him four hours ago — four years ago?

"What the fuck, hyung?" He snaps and Mark vaguely remembers that they'd been fighting before he'd left — been transported? Time travelled? — Mark doesn't even know anymore.

"You knew," he says accusingly, staring at Donghyuck in disbelief. "Four years, you knew and you never said a goddamn _thing_."

Donghyuck’s combative expression relaxes and understanding floods his features. He turns around fully and sits up, crossing his legs, and shoving his phone aside. "So it finally happened, huh? How was it?"

"Four _years_ , Donghyuck!" Mark exclaims, his heart hammering. He’s back in his own time. He’s back in his own body. Donghyuck had _known_. "How the fuck did you not _tell me_?"

Donghyuck snickers, leaning back on his palms. "How was I supposed to know it wouldn't trigger a fucking butterfly effect or something?"

"Oh," Mark growls, exasperation washing over him and lunges at him. "I hate you _so much_ Lee Donghyuck."

Donghyuck laughs, full throated before Mark slams him to the bed and kisses him hard. Their teeth knock together and their noses smash uncomfortably but Mark doesn't pull away, just adjusts their positions and kisses Donghyuck again and again.

"Do you know how _long_?" He gasps, unable to stop running his hands all over Donghyuck’s body, his cheeks, his arms, cataloging the differences, remembering him again. "How long I was waiting to do this— seeing you, younger you— and not being able to touch you?"

"You pervert," Donghyuck accuses laughing, already rucking Mark's shirt up and pulling it off him, not without some difficulty because it's tighter than it had been four years ago. "Can't believe you, hyung. Lusting after my younger self with my nubile body—"

"Nubile body?" Mark gasps incredulously, yanking Donghyuck's pants off. "I _hate_ you."

"Say that again when you aren't gagging on my cock," Donghyuck advises and Mark proceeds to do just that.

"Do you even remember what we were fighting about?" Mark mumbles forty minutes later, face stuck into the crook of Donghyuck's neck. There's come drying on his thigh and he feels sore all over but he's too comfortable to move. "Before I— you know — did that whole thing."

"I do, actually," Donghyuck sighs. "But I'll let you off because time travel didn't ruin your ability to give a blowjob."

"How sweet," Mark says and sticks his tongue in Donghyuck's ear just to make him shriek.

**Author's Note:**

> send me your thoughts <3
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/_donghyuck_)  
> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/thereisnoreality)


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